1. trust the americans to wipe out a species said to be impossible to wipe out. case in point: the passenger pigeons. in the late 1800's, a single flock of migrating passenger pigeons meant a 4hrs long solar eclipse. that is 2,230,000,000 birds. two-freaking-billion birds flying across the sky, blocking out the sun. the passenger pigeons were hunted and proposed bills to protect them failed to be passed in Congress because the birds were deemed too numerous to possibly be able to kill off. the bird has been extinct since first september 1914. the last one, martha, dropped dead from the stress of so many guilty americans visiting her at the Cincinnati Zoo.
2. the closest relative to the dodo is the modern pigeon. that effectively means the dodo was a glorified giant stupid flightless pigeon. also, they were apparently unafraid of Man, having never met any. the first they met were excited by the amount of consumable flesh, all in one bird! and the massive eggs, which were laid one at a time, many years apart. obviously the dodo never survived, having such bad reproduction strategies and little sense.
3. the Great Auk was an (thought to be) ancestral penguin found in the North Pole. i thought they were wiped out by bears. they were actually killed off for stuffing and trophies. when the number of great auks fell dramatically, the first thing biologists said was "i don't have a specimen!" they proceeded to hire people to travel to Iceland to kill off these majestic 1m tall birds. to the auk's credit, they apparently packed a mean punch-peck! (oh, i just noticed the pun! how funny!!!) yes, conservationists can be incredibly stupid sometimes.
4. conservationists learnt just how mean Murphy and his damn law can be. the heath hens were chicken-sized birds found only at Martha's Vineyard, a presidential getaway just off the US east coast. learning from the mistake of the passenger pigeon, bills were passed to protect the heath hens. too bad BigBadMurphy came along. there was a fire, during which sensible daddy birds flew the coop, while mummy birds stayed to ensure the safety of the eggs. needless to say, at the end of the fire, there was plenty of roast chicken to go around. when the flyaway birds returned, they were welcomed by an exceptionally bitter winter, which few survived. in the spring that followed, there was a hawk invasion at martha's vineyard, which wiped out any remaining sturdy birds. heath hens have been extinct since the early 1900s. now conservationists know not to put all their eggs in one basket (this is my professor's bad joke, not mine!).
